


Impetuous Love

by neevechilton



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Fluff, Friends to Lovers, harry wells deserves to be loved, oc works with the team at star labs, they're in love and everything is fine, this is also just soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:42:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27171925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neevechilton/pseuds/neevechilton
Summary: They have been close friends for a while since he came to Earth-1, they work together too often not to know as much as they do about each other.Idiots to lovers tbh.
Relationships: Earth-2 Harrison "Harry" Wells/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	Impetuous Love

**Author's Note:**

> ****Important OC details to know (or just read and be confused I guess idk your call):****  
> \- outside of her work with star labs she is a career criminal (redemption arc i guess but not really)  
> \- her place at star labs predates the rest of the team, so does her relationship with thawne (they were together/she knew who he was)  
> \- she was in central city when the particle accelerator went off, and was affected  
> \- can collect other meta abilities through touch, but by the time she learned that, there were too many collected to be controllable. she wears a dampening cuff a good percent of the time to stay in control. she can control a few abilities, thawne's speed is one of them, he taught her to use it.  
> **I wrote this character for me and didn't have intentions of sharing when I did so i don't know how much is in the writing and how much is just in my head please feel free to ask me questions, leave a comment or send a message, im more chill than i come off i promise**

It’s unwelcome, but not uncommon, that something leave Harry’s hand at a rather threatening speed when something fails to go right with him, or something in his head tells him with no particular detail, _throw that_. It just happens, more often than not, in the lab while he’s working, and Cisco is often the only victim or bystander around. A change in this seems to be on the horizon in light of his recent agitation.

Today, as late afternoon light sifts through the windows and into the cortex, everyone has collected back together in wake of lunch that rarely gets taken promptly. Lana makes a point of leaving for food and coffee and freedom. Otherwise, if pressed, she’ll stuff herself into this building and work until her brain fries, or stalls like an unpredictable car. She’s old enough now to know not work herself into any earlier a grave than is already marked for her.

Presently, she’s settled quite comfortably into one of the end chairs at the monitor desk, her coffee between her and the keyboard in front of her that she’s failed to touch since she sat down. This congregation of the entire S.T.A.R labs team is more of familiarity and routine. Neither one of them have any reason for calling a meeting other than to mill around each other for a while to feel human again. Before they’re set to hole up in a lab or something of the like until the day is a wash, once more, with a lack of results or developments.

Really, Lana wants to go home. She wants to sit on her balcony and watch the rest of the day from where she can see it fall over the city. She wants coffee that doesn’t come in a take-out cup, or the S.T.A.R labs coffee machine that’s just as overworked as the people it serves. She wants to be out of these clothes, she wants to be out in open air in comfort and quiet and let her mind wind down from the clattering and whirring and shaking its been set on doing all day.

Some unused prototype off of a table near enough to Harry’s orbit is launched into the air with no particular course. He does, to his credit, realize it when it arcs off toward Lana, and is immediately filled with a wash of regret and latent guilt. He lifts both shoulders, tense and bracing as if it were nearing his head rather than Lana’s.

Without looking up from the patiently empty monitor in front of her, Lana catches it in her left hand and sets it on the desk with some great force. Her gaze remains on her lack of work, her expression remains chillingly still. The aggression behind the force at which the object met the desk was enough to shake the room into reality and out of their heads, and shake Harry out of his irrationality.

If this didn’t surprise the surrounding team members enough, what truly nailed home a blinking moment of shock was Harry’s quietly spoken apology. It was just _sorry_ with a great deal of caution and some amount of remorse that carried well out of him. Any hint of the consistently cold tone of his was missing for this instance specifically.

Lana hums noncommittedly and hits a key on the computer in front of her to shut it down for the day. “I’m going home,” she picks up her half-empty coffee cup and pushes out of her chair. Everyone’s focus is torn between watching Lana and watching Harry. At the moment they both seem direct opposites, and that’s almost as appalling as her reflexes and his apology. They are, almost all of the time, operating on the same wavelength. Two people using the same mind and thought. They come to agreements before the entire situation is even laid out. Siding with each other without sufficient information to back the decision.

It’s barely broaching 3pm. But as she shrugs into her coat off the back of her chair, no one protests. She spoke with such definition that it seemed clear enough that what anyone else said on the matter would be irrelevant. They’re all still too struck by the Wells-Verger exchange to articulate anything anyway.

Ordinarily, if someone on the team were to give up on the day in the middle of a meeting, on a day where absolutely no one has reached any sort of development on any front, there’d be a sharp-edged comment shot their way by Harry. But it’s rare these find their way out of him when it’s Lana at the receiving end.

She pulls round, black sunglasses out of her coat pocket and dons them, gaze focusing on Harry behind the darkened lenses. They exchange a long silence that seems to hold an entire conversation, and then she turns to leave without another word. The staccato clip of her heels count out the minutes of silence that are left in her wake.

The day feels longer than it already was. And with Lana now absent, it only seems to stretch further and further away from a foreseeable end.

Harry finally breathes out a long suffering sigh and shuts his eyes, bracing his head in one hand.

“Hey, man, she hates everyone today, not just you,” Cisco mutters, focusing back on his own monitor in front of him.

The withering look shot in Cisco’s direction as a response is missed due to lack of attention. But it can be felt almost physically. Much like Lana, Harry exits the room without a word on the matter, but his pace is quick.

The general thought amongst the team is that if he’s trying to catch up to a criminal set on leaving, who has the capabilities of Thawne’s speedforce, he might as well give up. But it isn’t spoken. Like a great deal of things on the Wells-Verger matter. It’s a triangle of complicated things that everyone is afraid to get pulled into, or pushed aggressively away from if they get too close to touching it. It looks like the seconds before a storm or a car crash, or one tremendous change of any kind.

Harry catches up with Lana at the elevator, relieved that his assumption of her feeling no need to use speed was correct. It’s not a quick pace, but it’s one with intention behind it. It makes Lana turn around out of curiosity.

She looks him over once, then focuses on his face. Harry felt the entire exchange in the pit of his stomach. Something about them is severely _off_ , and it didn’t start with wayward projectiles. Something that used to sit quiet and obediently ignored in the air between them has become wild and uncontrolled. It’s visible, palpable. Harry can feel it when she looks at him. Lana can feel it in the center of her chest just below her heart.

“We’re good,” she tells him, reaching out to call the elevator to this level of the facility. A hum picks up in the distance. They don’t take their eyes off each other.

Harry says, “You don’t usually lie to me,” he studies her very carefully, “And if you do, it’s usually of better quality than that.”

This is true. Whoever said Harrison Wells isn’t right at almost every point in time doesn’t know him well enough, or has no grasp on the situation.

Lana nods slowly to show him that she recognized this fact of life. She’s never going to be someone who outright hands him the _you were right_ he feels he deserves, but he gets it in acceptance and a forward moving conversation using his statement as a jumping off point. Lana likes quite a number of things about Harry, but there are days where, despite their friendship and fondness, she really does _hate_ the side of him that knows he’s right and makes it abundantly clear to everyone in the room. Doing it subtly is almost worse than if he’d jumped onto the desk and held out his arms to announce, _all of you are wrong, and I am always, always right._

“You’re irritating me,” she tells him honestly, and he lets out a short breath, shaking his head and dropping his gaze. Unimpressed and now irritated himself. They are honest friends, the kind that say what they mean or they don’t speak. There isn’t very much one doesn’t know about the other at any given time. Lana continues, “But you’re still the person I want to see at the end of the day.”

He holds out a hand as the elevator doors open, and arcs an eyebrow at her. As if asking, _are you leaving or not?_ With emphasis on the fact that he very much doesn’t want her to.

She studies him with a stern expression a moment, “Will you come with me?” This is an uncharacteristically polite and soft thing for Lana Verger to do. To ask him like that. In that tone, with that expression.

“Yeah,” he pockets his hands in his jeans with some effort and steps after her into the elevator.

_ _ _

The drive over to her place is quiet. She keeps the driver’s side window down and rests her elbow on the open frame, tilting her head to rest against her hand. The cold air from outside pushes itself into the car, and Harry forces himself still in a thin sweater in mid-December. He wants, very much, to be irritated by her having her window selfishly open without any regard for his company. But it’s her car, and her invitation extended to him to come along.

And there is something captivating about her hair slowly making its way out of the bun she’d secured it into, the longer the wind plays with it. High speeds on main roads take this up a little, and she blinks some stray strands off her eyelashes. She is entirely sharp edges and saturated color in specific places. The electric dark red of her hair, the cool and vibrant green of her eyes behind her sunglasses. Sharply pointed grey nails, and a lighter grey jacket so long it brushes the back of her calves when she walks.

Harry knows what changed, because he was careless enough to let it happen mutually. If it had just been a change in her caution not to let it show what she thinks of him, they might have been fine. But Harry has been reckless and so beyond tired of being cautious about everything. Pieces of his own thoughts and emotions have slipped through the filter they both use. It’s not just to keep intact their friendship that means an incredible amount to both of them, but it’s a safety measure, for when he inevitably leaves.

He does not belong here. Not in the way that people don’t belong in places they don’t want to be, not even in the way that he is a tourist. He doesn’t belong in the way that this is not his dimension. This isn’t his Earth, his timeline, his life to live. He is a prisoner until he figures out a way to fix at least a handful of problems that are barring him from going back to his Earth.

Lana was cautious for so long because the idea of him leaving already tears at her heart in a way she isn’t fond of. She thinks about the day she has to say goodbye to someone who became her friend so easily, so quickly and so effectively, and everything she has left alive in her just _aches._ It would only be worse, rationally, if she were to let him closer than he already is only to watch him go. That would just be a drawn out version of tearing out a piece of herself for him to take with him. And she’s lost enough pieces of herself that it’s made her less than human over the years.

He can’t have one to keep, because she doesn’t have disposable pieces left. He’d be taking something vital, and it’d leave her to sort out what that does to a person. She’s sorted it out enough times before to know that she’s not entirely capable of doing it again. It would leave her just a little _less_ , visibly, physically and emotionally. It’d be wildly noticeable if he took a part of her.

But it is becoming too hard to shut out everything it does to her to think about him.

At some point Lana shut the window, and Harry didn’t notice until his hands warmed in his lap, and he was no longer fighting the urge to shake with the cold. The heating in the car works wonders to bring him back to life, and he relaxes some against the seat.

“You know, I think we got lazy,” Lana says, the car slowing to a stop at a red light that allows her to cast a brief glance over at him. They consider each other carefully a long moment. He nods once. The car pulls forward and quiet settles back over the vehicle.

“Is it a bad thing?” he asks her, tired of playing around it, playing around all of it. The fact that he’s breaking in noticeable ways with the things he is missing, the things he can’t fix, the reason he’s stuck here in an unfamiliar place. The fact that he is more exhausted every day and sleep isn’t fixing it so sleep isn’t the problem. The fact that he breathes easier when he looks at her, and softens enough to stop the headache when she’s close. He wants her so much closer, so much of the time.

“I imagine only in time,” she replies gently, there isn’t anything behind it but acceptance, which makes Harry realize he’d been right once more. She softens, not out of contentment or comfort, instead a sadness passes across her expression, “I have always been bad at goodbyes.”

“Why do you want to say goodbye to me?” he asks, and then it hits him and he shuts his eyes.

“I don’t,” she looks over at him with a torn and complicated expression, “No matter who you are to me, I very, very badly don’t want to say goodbye to you for any reason.”

This hurt more than he thought it would. It hurt in the way that shock sometimes hurts. In the way that realizations of the obvious yet overlooked hurt. It hurt his composure and his confidence. It hurt, deep in his chest, and he so desperately doesn’t need any more of that kind of pain. There’s already enough of it keeping him awake, it pairs tastefully with fear and doubt, and makes for insomnia that’s near unshakable.

“Oh,” is all he can manage. It’s all he had left in him to speak, everything else got the momentum sucked out of it, and left his thoughts drifting in slow, unclear circles in his head entirely unhelpful for continued conversation.

“If I stayed…” he starts.

“You won’t.” This time her tone was cold like the air in the car was cold with the window open. Cold without any regard. Cold in a selfish way.

“If you…”

“Don’t.” When she stops him again, it’s immediately clear that the cold sharpness earlier was covering up the way her voice shakes without it. It shook this time, wavered, just a little at the end. And she drew in careful breaths for a long time before either of them spoke again.

Harry shuts his eyes, running a hand down his face only to let it drop into his lap with his other.

Lana is quiet as she pulls the car into the underground parking, and the gate shuts behind them. Lana is quiet as she parks, meticulous and skilled. She’s quiet as she shuts the car off, and she doesn’t move even after unstrapping and taking the keys out of the ignition. Her breathing is uneven. The moments of silence hadn’t made any improvements.

Resting her hand flat against the steering wheel, delicate and careful, she focuses on it as she says, “It is already going to hurt. I am… capable of coming back from a lot less now. I’m not the same person I was a few years ago.” She continues to focus on her hand and the steering wheel in the quiet car, and before he can speak, she says with honesty that burns him, “It would break my heart, if it won’t already.”

He wants to tell her nothing is black and white, and that the breaches aren’t going to close forever. He wants to tell her he’s good at multitasking, and he’s good at holding onto the things that matter to him. He wants to tell her that he would rather do anything else if the other option is breaking her heart. He wants to tell her it’s going to hurt him too.

Lana looks over at him finally, and his heart just aches in response. His words failing him, his thoughts failing him, if his heart started failing him that’d make an already dire circumstance more so.

“Do you think it’s going to be easy?” he asks her, pushing past the thoughts in him that claw to get out whether they fit into the conversation or not, “For me? To leave like that?” He shakes his head faintly, holding her gaze, “We did something stupid, you and me,” he releases a faint breath that can only barely be considered a laugh, but it draws a sad smile out of her.

“Yeah, we did,” she sighs, dropping her gaze a moment. She reaches out to put her hand over his on his leg. “We made interdimensional travel complicated,” she smiles faintly and it draws another laugh out of him made up mostly of short breaths. It shakes his shoulders this time, and pulls a smile onto his face.

“I don’t know if you noticed, but I tried very hard not to get attached,” he points out.

“Yes, your defense mechanism is being insufferable, it’s a shame that’s what got my attention,” she laughs, dropping her head forward with a soft breath, “I ruined your whole thing.”

“You know, you’re the very likely the reason I’m still breathing right now,” his tone loses some levity with the truth of this, “Having you backing me like you have, and defending me. You have helped me more than I think you realize.”

Lana squeezes his hand in hers, shutting her eyes tightly, afraid to lift her gaze and what she’ll see in his expression. It takes so much strength not to pull him close when one of them feels unsteady. It’s the hardest thing she’s had to do in a long time, pretending she isn’t in love with him.

“Well, it’s all I am ever trying to do, so…” she sighs, “It’s nice to know I did one thing right.”

After a moment, Harry turns his hand over under hers and laces their fingers together without any caution. Without any regard, and feeling like being selfish. Needing very badly to do something. Anything close to letting out some pieces of how he feels about her. Because it’s beginning to fill him up, and tear him apart.

“Don’t you know,” she holds his hand just as tightly, “How stupid this is?” Lifting her gaze to his, “Harry, I…”

When he leans over to kiss her, it’s careful. It isn’t without regard or in any way reckless. He gives her time to stop him, and when she doesn’t, their lips brush, just softly, just enough for it to be a kiss but little else. Lana lifts one hand up to rest against him just under his jawline, her thumb follows the line, stubble rough against her skin. They consider what they both did, for a moment, like this, barely room enough between them if one of them wanted to speak. If Harry said any of the thousands of things running through his head, the words would be hers the second they left him.

Their hands are still caught together atop his leg between them, palms flush, fingers together securely, as if they thought they had to let go of each other right this moment, and this was their protest. Lana knows, deeply, she’s going to do a great deal of protesting when the day finally comes that he leaves. She’s going to be childish about it, selfish about it, and it’s going to hurt unimaginably either way.

Lana adjusts the way her hand sits under his chin and she pulls him back to her that short distance, bringing her lips back to his. She is soft about it, warm with the way she touches him and leans toward him, but there is some need and intention behind the way she kisses him. As if she imagined doing this for a long time before this moment, and has needed to do it ever since. His first step just gave her enough reason to disregard rationality. It gave her the permission she needed to hold him close to her and not let go.

The console digs into her as she leans forward across it, and it digs into the side of his ribcage. It’s not a convenient place to kiss someone, the front seats of a new model Bentley. They’ve also not kissed anyone else in a long time before this moment, both of them breaking their consecutive year records. But kissing is something easy that isn’t easily forgotten, especially not in a moment where it feels like it might be the most important thing in the world to do it.

“I’m sorry,” Harry sits back with some abrupt speed that leaves Lana stunned. He pushes open the door of the car and steps out, “I can’t do that,” he disappears from view only because she doesn’t move. She feels as if she can’t move.

_I can’t do that…_

Lana feels distinctly ill and she has only herself to blame. She shuts her eyes and releases a long and erratic breath, trying to reign it in. She gets about halfway toward stability when the driver’s door opens and he gently reaches out to her to guide her out of the car.

“What do you mean…?” she starts, and she’s surprised her voice holds.

“I mean we’re both old enough to know not to do any of that in a car,” he threads an arm around her back and pulls her close to him, cupping her face softly with one hand when he brings his lips back to hers. Kissing her properly, close and warm, his hand laid flat against her back, his pulse beats between them quick enough that Lana relaxes some. As much as every fiber of her wants to relax in his arms like this, content and softened and stupidly happy, which is the best way to be happy, she has wanted to kiss him for a long time, and that is what she does given the opportunity.

She kisses him back until he lets out a short, breathless laugh and rests his forehead against hers. She traces the sharper edges of his face, down his neck to hold onto his shoulders. She smooths her hands down to the bend in his arms, holding onto him here with one hand a moment. Her thumb draws small lines back and forth against him. Her other hand finds its way back to his shoulder.

Harry is aware that one has to like someone a remarkable amount to touch them the way Lana touches him. He knows because he is doing the same thing, mapping out pieces of her that he can reach without immaturely escalating this in a parking lot. He knows because, though it’s been a very long time since he’s been loved, he hasn’t forgotten what it feels like.

It’s rare, however, for someone to be capable of ensuring it’s entirely felt without the corresponding words to provide context. It’s something that’s hard to do without knowing someone an immeasurable amount, and harder still to do while also trying to hold composure through the _firsts_ that make hearts unsteady and nerves fried. Lana does this like it’s second nature, as if it’s built into her to know how to love Harry. And the idea of that leaves him more winded than kissing her had.

It makes him want to tell her in that moment what he’s been careful not to even allow himself to _consider_. The words building up and up in his head, it fills his heart, it shakes his nerves and his heart gets tossed around in the middle of it. He holds onto her a little tighter.

_Not in an underground parking garage, for god’s sake…_

“You,” she touches the side of his face softly, “Are doing a great deal of thinking.”

Harry smiles, shutting his eyes and releasing a faint laugh, “I don’t know if you know, but that’s very likely all I’m good for.”

She hums noncommittedly, shaking her head some, head tilted to consider him as she traces fingertips along his browbone, along his hairline, before carding her fingers gently through his hair. His eyes drift shut and he rests his forehead back against hers. “I don’t think that’s true,” she tells him softly, continuing the gentle pattern, playing with his hair a moment longer.

“I’ll take your word for it, can we get out of this garage?” he carefully lets go of her as he makes this proposition, and Lana smiles, nodding as she locks her car, and pats herself down to ensure she has her phone and her wallet and her ID to even get them into her place.

She hooks two fingers around his as they walk toward the elevator, and he immediately laces their hands together in a way that both startles and settles Lana’s restless heart. Once they step into the private elevator, she turns to rest her forehead on his shoulder, smiling softly to herself. Harry tilts his head to rest against hers and relaxes considerably.

They both stay like this for a long time, only startled out of it when the doors open to her foyer. Lana pulls him with her, walking backward into her place, some lights coming on automatically due to movement, some of them prompted by something small she indicated on the wall.

The security system announces it detected her phone and automatically authorized her presence, _if this was an error in authorization please take immediate action._ Lana takes absolutely no action beyond linking her arms behind Harry’s head and kissing him softly in her kitchen. She adjusts this only to press her hand against him under his shirt, and trace his ribs with her fingers before laying her hand flat against him. A small smile curves his mouth upward as he kisses her back.

Lana would do anything in the world for that smile, and it’s clear they’re going to put that to the test.

When he wraps both arms around her, safe and comfortable, Lana wonders what its like on his Earth in the way people wonder what it’s like to drive a car they fully intend to buy regardless. That is, of course, how she got the Bentley. And it’s clear that that’s how she’s going to keep Harry.

**Author's Note:**

> I do use an OC, anything relevant is usually described in the beginning or as it comes up. I can post a full background one day if it ever matters to anyone, I've worked using this OC for two years. I try to only post ones where it doesn't matter. I write for myself really, sharing any of it is new to me.
> 
> None of my works will be multi-chapters they are all one-shot framed or similarly designed.
> 
> Leave a comment, let me know this fandom isn't dead on here:)  
> Follow me on tumblr i have a sideblog for this fandom: theflashtvsideblog.tumblr.com


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